


Cahills, Assemble!: Heroic Origins

by LeeLeeMak



Series: Cahills Assemble! [5]
Category: The 39 Clues - Various Authors
Genre: Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Gen, Marvelverse!Cahills, adding tags as they become appropriate
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-18
Updated: 2014-04-18
Packaged: 2018-01-19 21:31:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1484767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LeeLeeMak/pseuds/LeeLeeMak
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Throughout the years, there have been many superheroes that have graced the Earth -- as well as supervillains. Each has a story on how they came to be, and each will be told in the time to come.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cahills, Assemble!: Heroic Origins

It had been an explosion unlike anything Hope had ever seen.

They had been working so hard to keep everything as safe as possible, wearing all the right suits and pulling all the right stops. No one who wasn’t authorized couldn’t enter the room, and only four people had been authorized. She, Arthur, Shep, and Eisenhower were the only ones allowed in. Thankfully, too, since the casualty report would be a much shorter process.

That was, until she realized she was still thinking.

The room was sizzling, her clothes were nearly burned off, and the machine was completely destroyed. All of their hard work was gone. Her colleagues were dead, and she probably would be too, soon.

Someone rustled around next to her. Arthur? No, the lump of mass could only be Eisenhower. Arthur’s roommate at West Point, he was really only there for the heavy lifting. He was the only brute they could find that was willing to work with radioactive material. “For my wife,” he had said gruffly, referring to the money he was being paid. Now, at least, Mary Todd would get a little more out of life insurance.

“Shep?” Arthur -- she knew it was him, because he stood up -- called. “Shep, Hope, Eisenhower? You guys okay?”

There was no way they were going to survive this. Any minute now, any second, they would fry up. Maybe something had been delayed, maybe their clothes had saved them.

But, thirty minutes later, a bomb squad showed up. And they were still alive.

One hour after the explosion, they arrived at a specialized hospital. And they were still alive.

Two hours later, they had IVs hooked up to them and they were being questioned. And they were still alive.

Three hours later, Hope had never felt better in her entire life.

\--

They came together in secret a few weeks after the incident, after it was reported that none of them had received any lasting damage. Even for someone of average intelligence like Eisenhower, that was enough to be suspicious.

He figured they were all being watched, followed, monitored, even after they were released. How could they have possibly survived that unscathed? He knew the government wasn’t done with them. Not by a long shot.

He wore long sleeves despite the summer heat. No need for his former teammates to see the rash he’d developed. It was enough coming from Mary Todd, but he didn’t need those geniuses fretting over him. Besides, they’d only be worried about themselves getting rashed. Judging by how weird it look, it must have come from the explosion.

He was the third to show up, Arthur and Shep having arrived together. They seemed off. Like they’d had too much coffee. Maybe they had, Arthur had been a coffee addict in college.

It was ten minutes before showed up, and even then it was only her voice.

“Are you guys experiencing weird things?” They all tried to find her, but a floating bag stopped them. From the bag, clothes were brought out. Then, it seemed some invisible person was putting it on. “I can’t figure out how to become visible.”

Shep started laughing, though Eisenhower was sure he wasn’t making fun of Hope. It was a nervous sort of laugh. It was the laugh Eisenhower nearly let out.

Then, suddenly, the Aussie lit his finger on fire -- without a match.

Arthur, although he was sitting next to him, stretched his own finger as if it were a rubber band and put out his cousin’s fire.

All of them turned to Eisenhower -- he could feel all of their eyes on him, even though he couldn’t see Hope’s.

“I’ve just got a rash.”

“Let’s see it.” The image of Hope’s hair flickered for a moment. Maybe she was concentrating on becoming visible?

He rolled up his sleeve for them to all see -- only the rash was gone. There was no blotchy red spot there anymore, no more boils or pus filled sacs.

It was replaced with rock.

\--

The minute The Fantastic Four debuted, the minute supervillains started appearing.

Arthur suggested creating the team, thinking they’d just stop bank robbers and shootings. He didn’t think they’d actually have to, like, fight people with powers that were on par with their own. Especially not while the team still had little control over their own powers and these guys had more experience with theirs. Hope still randomly disappeared mid-battle, Shep still extinguished himself in midair, Eisenhower was still having trouble coming to terms with his transformation, and Arthur still couldn’t figure how to make the stretching not hurt after he came back to normal. It sucked a lot.

On this fine day, they were facing the jolly red giant on a terror spree across the city. And Arthur, weak and tired from stretching himself out, was about to become his next victim. He was just beginning to think about how much The Fantastic Three didn’t roll off the tongue when Hope appeared in front of him, her arms stretched above her head as if to stop the block of rock the giant was about to smash on to him. The Fantastic Two was even worse.

But the rock never hit.

It probably took him a solid minute to realize that the rock should have hit him by now but it hadn’t. He opened his eyes, weary a crusted with tears from overexertion. There was something -- a film, a field -- separating him and Hope from the rock. And it seemed like Hope was the one making it.

She bought Shep and Eisenhower enough time to get the giant down and detained, ready to be taken away to his own personal jail.

That night, Hope announced they needed to strengthen their training regime. No one argued. If she had previously unknown talents, then who else did?

That day, they really had become The Fantastic Four.

\--

A new enemy rose. A man who called himself Doctor Doom was out to get them, supposedly injured in the same radiation explosion where they’d gotten their powers. Shep hadn’t heard of anyone being injured in that accident -- but then again, they hadn’t had any injuries either. But Shep had never heard of this guy, and he knew everyone’s name. Besides, the area was in tight security; the only way he could have been effected along with them was if he’d been crawling around illegally.

Doom sent tons of goons after them, all of them easily defeated. So, the problem wasn’t that the goons were hard to defeat, it was that he sent so many after them at the same time. They beat them easily, but it took up so much of their energy that Doom was able to capture them when they were weakened. Hope had tried to keep a forcefield around them until Doom lost hope, but he was a diligent man and she didn’t have much energy left in her.

Everytime he tried to catch fire, fire extinguishers turned on and blasted him down. Arthur’s prison was made of some kind of plastic that was crack-free. Hope was in a cell that illuminated her even when she went invisible. Eisenhower was in a steel cage. Little imprints of him decorated the walls, attempts from when he tried to free himself by ramming himself into the wall.

Whoever this Doom guy was, he’d certainly put a lot of thought into his plan. There was no way they were getting out, no matter how hard they tried.

Unable to communicate with one another, Shep had all but lost hope of getting out. But they needed to figure out who this Doom guy was. Why was he doing this? How did he know all of this about them?

He entered the room with a rather smug grin on that metallic mask of his -- or, at least, the air of one. He began monologuing to them, boasting about how he’d bested the great Fantastic Four. How wonderful he was, how extraordinary. So on and so on. He’d placed microphones in all of their cells, so they all could hear him (at least, Shep could hear him quite well. He assumed by Hope’s and Arthur’s expression that they would hear as well, and it only made sense that he would include Eisenhower in the mix).

He was getting to the end of telling them his plan when the ceiling caved in. Once all the dust settled, Shep found that he had been released. They all had. Confused about the situation, all but Hope stayed in their cells.

She walked towards the middle of the room, at the top of the rubble there was a man. At least, it could have been a man. Whoever or whatever it was was covered in a metal suit, some kind of weird armor. Hope put her hands around his face, a look of confusing and honest-to-God longing as she looked at the metallic man.

She lifted his helmet off, just barely uttering the word, “Vikram?”

\--

The Fantastic Five wasn’t a good name -- especially since Ironman’s powers came from his suit and not from him, like the rest of them. Plus, with the eventual addition of Jake and Att, they needed a new name anyway. It was Hope’s mother who came up with it -- revealing her secret involvement with the government organization S.H.I.E.L.D. in the process. The Avengers, they became, officially enacting the Avengers Initiative.

They had no idea how to handle what was ahead of them.

 


End file.
